Burlingham Mill – HDR
This entry was posted on Jul 05 2010
Image by Andrew Stawarz
Came runner up in the recent This Week in Photography podcast challenge on HDR 
Reworked version using Photomatix Pro 3.
Came runner up in Digital Camera Magazine’s HDR themed mission.
Featured in a guide to HDR.
Used as cover art for the Ryan Express album Soon To Break. So zip over to Amazon and buy the album.
Featured in Free Photo Resources article HDR Explained.
Featued in ZTRIXQ.se’s piece 15 fantastiska HDR foton.
Used by PetaPixel in Is HDR Ethical in Photojournalism.
Great shot, I like the composition and the colours are just great. The whole series of HDR shots you’ve been posting recently have been brilliant!
love this
Stunning!
I’m really enjoying this series. Care to share some of your post-processing techniques with us?
–
Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
In answer to your question Beau:
Each HDR was composed from 9 exposures by setting the camera to auto-bracket mode using 9 exposures 1 stop apart (capturing a range -4 to +4), continuous low mode and pressing and holding the remote shutter release until the 9 exposures have been completed. Used my sturdy heavy Benbo Trekker tripod with a hotshoe level to make sure everything was nice and square to avoid some of the converging line pitfalls when using such a wide lens. That’s the easy bit done.
From Adobe Bridge select the 9 pictures, tools menu, Merge to HDR. Then set the white point to the end of the exposure envelope in the histogram (to ensure the full range is captured) and leave at 32-bit depth. Once in Photoshop set the 32-bit preview options in theview menu to 0 exposure and 1 gamma.
For tone-mapping I use Photomatix’s tone mapping plugin. The settings I start from are as follows:
Strengh: 100 (to maximise the range of tones)
Saturation: 100
Light Smoothing: Very High (or High if you don’t mind too much haloing)
Luminosity: 5
White Point: 0.9 (go up to 4/5 for harder look)
Black Point: 0.012 (go up to 4/5 for harder look)
Gamma: 1.3
Color Temp: 0
Saturation Highlights: 10
Saturation Shadows: 10
Microcontrast: 0
Micro-smoothing: 15
Highlights Smoothing: 0
Shadows Smoothing: 0
Shadow Clipping: 30 (can go up to 50)
Back in Photoshop convert to 16-bit with 0 exposure and 1 gamma. Then some curve work to improve contrast. For final web output, resize to 1920 pixels along longest edge convert to Lab mode then select the lightness channel. Apply Smart Sharpen with 100 amount, 1 radius and remove lens blur. Then switch back to RGB mode and convert to 8-bit mode before saving as a JPG and there we are…
Awesome information Andrew, thanks!
–
Seen on my Flickr home page. (?)
Just wonderful. Your photos give me something to strive for – thanks for sharing!
great image. i really like the black sky that surrounds the building. congratulations.
congratulations
Andrew,
Thanks for the info, I never considered re-adjusting the white point.
A truly stunning shot in a beautiful collection.
Congratulations on getting TWiP’s runner up. A coin toss being the only determining factor, this was definitely worthy of a win. Well done!
Thanks everyone for your kind comments and congratulations to Huey for the win!
congratulations on being runner up …
Andrew, nice work.
FYI, when you use Merge to HDR in Photoshop, setting the white point to the end of the exposure envelope, does not affect how much of the dynamic range is captured or stored (as long as you keep it as a 32 bit image). This slider only changes the default exposure "view" for the HDR image when you open it. You can always change that setting with Exposure in Image>Adjust.
Thanks for the info borger now that probably ties in to the 32-bit preview settings that get set after merge and gives to the ability to whizz through the exposure range and preview what information is available. Shows how much more I’ve to learn on CS3.
Whoa – really nice work. I grew up nearby in Suffolk and it is wonderful to see such evocative shots of the area. Awesome.
Please join us and post this fantastic photo in:
Nikon D300 HDR
Outstanding!
oh wow..love this one.
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Baked Urbex, and we’d love to have this added to the group!
This is such a wonderful capture!! WOW!
Looks cool!!
Seen in the Baked Urbex pool.
Very nice shot!
Wonderful treatment, excellent image
Never tried any HDR as most of it looks horrible, though this shot has made me think again. That is when I have some spare time! Martyn
Hi, I’m an admin for a group called Rail Vignettes, and we’d love to have this added to the group!
This photo has been tracked for Excellence.
Seen in
Rail Vignettes
Superb image.
Wonderful – bravo!
Congratulations!!!